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Yes, they do. But;
- a) it gets more expensive with age;
- b) if you are fit to be transported, the insurance company will often gladly pay for an air ambulance back to Canada rather than pay your US hospital bills.

Plus if you don't have a permanent policy, pre-existing conditions can remove you from eligibility. There is specific medivac insurance that is cheaper than others. It relies on you having coverage up north. But some of them charge more for Canada because they have to stay with you until you get admited. And this can take a few days if your life is no longer in danger (almost always because medivac staff make that call).

Quote:
This year, an estimated 1.5 million Americans will declare bankruptcy. Many people may chalk up that misfortune to overspending or a lavish lifestyle, but a new study suggests that more than 60 percent of people who go bankrupt are actually capsized by medical bills.

Bankruptcies due to medical bills increased by nearly 50 percent in a six-year period, from 46 percent in 2001 to 62 percent in 2007, and most of those who filed for bankruptcy were middle-class, well-educated homeowners, according to a report that will be published in the August issue of The American Journal of Medicine.

"Unless you're a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, you're one illness away from financial ruin in this country," says lead author Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., of the Harvard Medical School, in Cambridge, Mass. "If an illness is long enough and expensive enough, private insurance offers very little protection against medical bankruptcy, and that's the major finding in our study."

Save this for the next time you hear someone questioning the value of Medicare. Yes, we have service delivery problems in Canada, but at least we have a public health care sytem.

I think one of the problems with Canada's health care system is the ER. I would think only a small fraction of the patients in the ER are actually there for an emergency. I'm all for user fees (even $5-$10 per visit)--I think this would significantly improve the efficiency of ER operations.

I live in a smaller city and have 2 young children. A walk-in clinic with good operating hours to cover off the times when my doctor is not open and my children have an affliction that is not an emergency, but that needs to be addressed/diagnosed before they can return to school or daycare, would keep us out of the ER entirely. That is a big, gaping hole in our local healthcare system.

I can come with a lot of reasons why not retire in Canada:
- high taxes and the money partially go to finance the retirement of people who did not save during their lifetime. In contrast, one could retire in a Caribbean country and pay no taxes.
- terrible health-care. It's true that the direct cost is very low, but the service is awful.
- bad weather year round except a couple of months on the west coast.
I'm interested in the reasons why current retirees chose Canada and why future moderate income retirees would retire in Canada.

Two things stand out as really important for me personally:
i) Security of Person
ii) Access to affordable healthcare
There are other things but these two rank at the top of my list.

Healthcare - physicians are paid extremely well in Canada, the only country that pays more is the USA, and this may be due to the fact that training as a MD is mostly similar and the border does not present a problem for a Canadian physician who wishes to practice in the USA.

I do not have a particular issue with access, my experience is that access to care for emergency stuff is excellent, and the elective stuff, well that is the price you pay for a healthcare system that covers everybody.

I do, however, have an issue with the fact that some physicians and nurses treat their patients as paupers and not deserving of respect, and sadly this seems to become worse as they grow older and have no one to advocate for them.

My wife had to go in for day surgery at a nearby town in Manitoba so we didn't know anyone at the hospital. I was so moved by the compassionate care she received that I wrote a note to admin and promptly got a courteous reply. Thankfully we are not big health care users but if this was an indication of our healthcare system we are a very fortunate society. Of course you will run into glitches but overall remember---it could be worse. Now only if we can return the Stanley Cup to Winnipeg!